In the Computer Dating Game, Room for a Coach

NY TIMES -- Mar 12 -- Dating-Profile.com, ProfileHelper.com and E-Cyrano.com turn stale profiles into eloquent and ads for $39 to $2,000. LookBetterOnline.com and SingleShots.com, sell professional photo shoots. Dating makeovers are hardly new. High-end offline dating services have long provided help, said Mark Brooks, of OnlinePersonalsWatch.com, "The promise of Internet dating is you plug in your profile and you send a few e-mails and you have got a date. It's not as easy as that."  Jim West, 43, a divorced engineer, struggled to get beyond the first "hello" e-mail when he started online dating.  He paid $49 for a critique from Eric Resnick, of ProfileHelper.com. The advice: when sending e-mail messages to women, ask them questions about their profiles so they are more inclined to reply. Match.com CEO Jim Safka says, online dating is like being on stage and being viewed by thousands of people. "Wouldn't you spend some time backstage getting ready?" Match is testing 'Match Platinum' in which professional matchmakers interview clients, coach them on appearance and style and then sift through Match's database of 15 million members to find a compatible date for $500 to $2,000, depending on the level of service. FULL ARTICLE @ NY TIMES